well done, old girl

If you live either way out in the country or neckdeep in a city, you know all about weird ancient heating systems.  Most suburban houses I've been in have neat little units in a closet near the washer and dryer and a cute 3M filter you are supposed to change once a decade year and some vents integrated into the decor here and there.

Hello, my name is Lora and I know all about weird ancient heating systems.

Have you ever been in my basement?
Yes?  Then you know all about the Elephant and the Beast.

The Elephant:

That's the oil tank.  I think it holds about a million gallons of oil.  Hundreds, for sure.  I buy the oil by the gallon from a local vendor and he pumps it out of his truck into a pipe thing that sticks out near my front door and there is some sort of tube that runs out of The Elephant, into the ground, under the house, and into The Beast.

The Beast:

That's a boiler.  The oil powers the boiler and the boiler heats up the water and the water runs through pipes that are all over the house and into radiators and the hot water makes the metal radiator hot and the radiator radiates heat in every room.  There are no ducts in this house, just pipes full of water.  That's why there is no Central Air or heat registers or cold air returns or anything.  Just good old fashioned plumbing.

The Beast? She's dead. 

Call up the oil company and they sent out a guy to take a look at it and he walked down the steps into the basement and said, "Jesus Christ"

Then he got a little closer.  And said, "oh my God".  And then he poked around and said, "I've been doing this my whole life (he's got to be in his fifties).  I started when I was 16, and I haven't seen one of these since I was about 18 or so".

Then he shook his head and took out his phone and told me "I'm gonna have to make a few phone calls.  This is solid steel.  It probably weighs about 800 pounds, and that's if you've got one of the lighter ones.  I need to find someone who knows how to cut these things apart because your stairs aren't going to take the weight of this plus the four or five men who we would need to carry it up."

Then he made a phone call.  And another.  And another.  And another.  The last guy gave him a name of someone he worked with twenty years ago cutting one of these apart and twenty years ago he was the only guy around who knew how to do it.  Then he made a phone call.  And then he found the guy who still does it. 

The steelworker is 78 years old. 
I shit you not.
The Beast was about as old as the steelworker.

I'm kind of sad that she's gone.  I like talking about her.  I like saying "holy crap you should see my heating system" and then talking about the giant green monsters in my basement.  It's a good conversation piece for when you've run out of things to talk about.
I'm guessing.  I've never run out of things to talk about.

I don't like how unreliable she was last year, but I understand.  She lived a good life.

Look what the men gone done to my girl:

She must be so cold and lonely down there with her skirts off.  Poor old girl.

A lot of people switch to gas or electric heat when the boiler goes. 
I like oil heat. I like that I can pay a local guy for heat rather than pay The Man. PECO and PGW get enough of my dollars. I don't like Big Business. But you could've probably guessed that. And I know, I know that the oil probably comes from a Big Business, but at least the middle man is just some dude from the neighborhood.

My basement is an interesting place.  Here are some of my favorite spots down there.

Did I ever tell you that my house was built without using nails?  I don't mean the floorboard tacknails, but the actual frame and walls.  It's made of wood and brick and plaster and mortar.  Neat, right?
All the wood is joined together like this:

It doesn't photograph well, but I'll show you next time you are here.  The wood is so hard it's practically petrified.

In most places, a "Finished Basement" means there is some carpet laid down and the walls are paneled off and there's a television and a couch and maybe a wetbar and a powder room.  In Philadelphia, a "Finished Basement" means that your walls and floor aren't made out of dirt.

I like living in an old house.  I am 99.9% sure it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I hope I can say the same for that steelworker.

Because, yikes.